Sunday, May 10, 2015

Tony Bragalia and the End of the Roswell Slides

THE “ROSWELL ALIEN SLIDES”

AND MY APOLOGY TO A DEAD CHILD OF THE MESA VERDE

BY ANTHONY BRAGALIA

Several days ago a group of
skeptical researchers applied a program called “SmartDeBlur” to the placard
found juxtaposed near the being pictured in slides from 1947 thought to be of
an extraterrestrial creature found crashed at Roswell. This author championed
the slides as those of an alien and this author was wrong.

The group of
skeptical researchers interpreted the placard as reading “Mummified Body of
Two Year Old Boy. At the time of burial the body was clothed in a xxx-xxx
cotton shirt. Burial wraps consisted of these small cotton blankets. Loaned by
the Mr. Xxxxxx of San Francisco, California.”

Working with a
colleague from Europe and with the text of the de-blurred placard, I discovered
last night that this interpretation of the text was correct. Found in the
September 1938 Volume VIII, Number 1 Mesa Verde Notes that was published
by the National Park Service was an article that definitively solves the
mystery of the “Roswell Slides.” In paragraph four of the section of the
publication entitled Around The Mesa was found this:

“A splendid mummy
was received by the Park Museum recently when Mr. S.L. Palmer Jr. of San
Francisco returned one that his father had taken from the ruins in 1894. The
mummy is that of a two year old boy and is in an excellent state of
preservation. At the time of burial the body was clad in a slip-over cotton
shirt and three small cotton blankets. Fragments of these are still on the
mummy.” The full text of the article can be found in this link:

This paragraph corresponds directly to the slides placard: the
mummified body of a two year old boy, three small cotton blankets
(the word “three” understandably seen by the de-blurring program as “these”)
and Mr. Xxxxx of San Francisco, California.

A CASE OF MISTAKEN
IDENTITY

The word “hoax” has been used to describe the “Roswell Slides”
saga. It was not. At least, the principal investigators, Tom Carey, Don
Schmitt, and I did not knowingly fake or obfuscate anything. No matter, it is a
serious case of mistaken identity, the consequences of which I fully accept.

I was told that the best-available, highest resolution
images of the placard were provided by the co-owner of the slides, Mr. Adam
Dew, and given to world-class photo experts including Ray Downing of Studio
Macbeth in NY (who conducted analysis on the Shroud of Turin) and Colonel
Jeffrey Thau (who sent them to the Pentagon’s Photo Interpretation Department.)
Despite the application of the best de-blurring software in the world, they
were unable to read the words on the placard with any definitiveness.

I can only surmise that Mr. Adam Dew did not provide to
these experts the highest-resolution images of the slides. Why he did not, I
cannot be certain. But Adam Dew has to this very day not yet publicly provided
the crystal-clear slide images that I know exist.

And Adam Dew in an email to a German researcher just two
days ago, accused the skeptics who applied the SmartDeBlur program to the placard
of using Photo Shop to fake their interpretation of the text. Given the
discovery of the Mesa Verde Notes which clearly corroborate this
interpretation, it is not the skeptics who faked anything. Mr. Dew has
some explaining to do.

He has provided at various times to researchers different
segments of the slides, partial images of the slides, and images of the slides
of varying resolution. We can ask why, but I think we know without asking.
Dew’s motivations were from the very beginning very different that those of
mine, of Tom’s and of Don’s. He is new to the UFO field and has no stake in it
as those who have spent years in such study. Unlike the placard images that he
provided, it is not hard to read between these lines.

INCREDIBLE BUT TRUE
COINCIDENCES

The data points and the narrative of the slide are all true. The
slide stock is from 1947, the very year of the crash. A Roswell vet from 1947
who actually personally viewed the dead bodies found fallen at Roswell did see
similarities between what he saw and the being shown on the slides. Bernerd Ray
and Hilda Ray, the original owners of the slides really were very well
connected people. Bernerd really was an oil exploration geologist who worked
the Permian Basin in New Mexico the 1940s and really was the President of a
geological society in 1947 that covered New Mexico and he really did quit the
organization after his 1947 term. His wife Hilda really was a prominent oil
industry lawyer in the 1940s who very likely was friends with Mamie Eisenhower.
They really did hide these slides in a chest only to be found decades later
after their deaths. The being depicted in the slide is of an extremely unusual
appearance, is unusually well-preserved and does bear strikingly odd features.

But all of this must
be a series of extraordinarily incredible coincidences. My guess is that Hilda
hid the slides of the mummy child within the chest because she felt some sort
of guilt that they were in some way exploitive. She was a childless woman. She
likely read that Mr. S.L. Palmer’s father had stolen the mummy child and that
Palmer’s son, with a sense of guilt, returned the child to its rightful
place.

LESSONS LEARNED AND AN
APOLOGY TO A DEAD CHILD

I have learned much about myself and things that I need to change
in order to become a better researcher. I must be less trusting, more
discerning and less accusatory of those with whom I disagree.

But more than this, I must offer my sincerest and deepest
apologies to the Native American people of the Southwestern United States. One
of their children, a dead child from well over a century ago, was made a
spectacle. Whoever you are, you deserve to be extended dignity and respect.
Your people, the Ancestral Puebloans, honored you by preserving you. I played
part in disturbing your eternal rest, and for that I am so very sorry. Though I
did not seek nor receive any money from any of this saga, and though my efforts
were sincere and my offense unintentional, I am making a substantial donation
to an American Indian children’s charity and encourage everyone else who played
part to do the same.

I agree with Tony Stark about Bragalia's honesty. However, I have elsewhere questioned his so-called "Incredible but true coincidences" as being neither incredible nor, in most cases, even coincidences. Such things are only 'incredible' if you want them to be.

Someone suggested the same methodology could be used to decipher the (in)famous Ramey memo. Could it? And, apart from David Rudiak, is anyone really that interested?

Am I to understand that Thomas Carey, Don Schmitt and Anthony Joseph Bragalia publicly endorsed slides that they neither saw with their own eyes nor had access to examine, first hand, themselves? How can this be?

I am not a researcher, but rather an avid enthusiast. Yet many times, I have thought of a protocol should I ever be presented with such an opportunity.

First off – I would want to see the slides with my own eyes. Scan them myself – there are pro/consumer grade slide scanners out there that are great – I have one! Let respected individuals, researchers, and labs within the field have the same access – get their thoughts – then “Share it” with the world.

Instead, this was “sold” to us as a much hyped movie “Kodachrome”, then billed (and milked for all it was worth) as a marquee event in Mexico with terms such as “Smoking Gun” thrown around like confetti – Yet at any point did anyone on the panel actually examine the slides themselves?

Then to put the owner of the slides under the bus is the same as what Tom Biscardi did in his frivolous “Bigfoot in the Freezer” event. Remember that once he made the images public, how the rest of field was able to solve in 2 minutes that it was a rubber mask? Despite Biscardi’s “extensive research” stating a smoking gun, others in the field were able to dismiss it in minutes – sound familiar?

This one’s gonna cost you guys! As it as already cost the field!

Glenn Dennis’ famed testimony of his encounter with the “Nurse” from Roswell AAF has been dismissed by Tom Carey, and Don Schmitt on account that the nurse never “disappeared”, Dennis just said that so she would have her privacy. Thus the authors have dismissed everything Dennis has stated.

My question is, should we now dismiss everything from the authors – as we now know the truth about the slides? Most of my beliefs on the subject of UFOs have been strengthen based on what I read in their books, and I now have to take a serious look into what the fact really are – and what do I know for sure?

"The word “hoax” has been used to describe the “Roswell Slides” saga. It was not. At least, the principal investigators, Tom Carey, Don Schmitt, and I did not knowingly fake or obfuscate anything. No matter, it is a serious case of mistaken identity, the consequences of which I fully accept."

Right. We can all go back to the written statements you made on this forum, and others, and the videotaped statements made by Schmitt and Carey just prior to the slides release to clearly establish what you and the others stated was a definitively non-human body and alien by depiction.

Apology aside, blind promotion of false images that you and others claimed were alien based on your "expert research" has proven this to be false - there was no research done on these slides at all since 72 hours after their release it was determined they were not what $100 ticket payers were told they were. A hoax has been perpetrated in every sense of the notion.

Consequences? No one should ever consider you a credible researcher in this field again - ever. Best find a new hobby.

"...someone suggested the same methodology could be used to decipher the (in)famous Ramey memo. Could it? And, apart from David Rudiak, is anyone really that interested?"

Well, that thought certainly occurred to me. Having read through the technical description of the algorithms used by SmartDeblur, I think it could quite possibly add some value over and above previous attempts. As discussed by the algorithm's developer, there are three sources of image degradation that these kind of algorithms attempt to deal with. The first is defocus, where the image comes to a true point focus either slightly ahead of or behind the focal plane of the camera. The second is image motion, where the camera's pointing axis is undergoing motion during the time the shutter is open. The third is random (or pseudorandom) noise.

Mathematically, defocus and image motion are relatively easy to correct for, because those processes are finitely describable--they occur as the result of deterministic processes. Random noise is not finitely describable and therefore creates deconvolution matrices which are very computationally "stiff" (i.e., require large computational capacity to try to solve).

The SmartDeBlur algorithm uses an approach called "Blind Deconvolution" to get around this problem. This technique simply makes a first ("blind") guess at the Point Spread Function solution and then corrects it during subsequent iterations. It sounds to me like a classic Kalman Filter approach that is simultaneusly creating successively better approximations of the physical plant and the controller.

Anyway, this could be a promising approach for analyzing the Ramey memo, because its image degradation--while containing some defocus and motion blur--seems to be dominated by noise.

Good to see Mr Bragalia man up. But my further question is - you saw Adam Dew has some explaining to do and also that he is 'new to the field' : How then could you, as an experience researcher be so incredibly gung-ho about something I could rather easily see was a mummy in about 5 seconds flat? And then the evidence simply mounted up more and more as I looked at the photo simply solidifying that realisation? Well, I guess the answer is quite obvious. Just please, leave ufology, and quickly.

Warning bells should have sounded when Adam Dew made these fanciful claims of the vast efforts to read the words on the placard. Since you can do it in minutes in simple desktop computing software, that was a total lie.

Worse, that the other participants were so naive as to believe that to be true, and didn't for a moment think to test it out for themselves, or ask the nearest image editing pro to help out. There are plenty to be found online if not at a local college.

Long and short of it: It appears someone glommed on to these slides purely for profit and nothing more. And desperate believers, hoping for vindication on Roswell, fell for it.

"My question is, should we now dismiss everything from the authors – as we now know the truth about the slides? Most of my beliefs on the subject of UFOs have been strengthen based on what I read in their books, and I now have to take a serious look into what the fact really are – and what do I know for sure?"

Yes, we should. The "Roswell Crash" is only as good as the witnesses and the researchers. With time a good percentage of the witnesses have been exposed as lying or changing their stories with time. A good many researchers have been exposed as lying or being not credible. Therefore, the case for the Roswell crash gets weaker every year. This is likely to be the end of Roswell research. The younger generations don't even appear to be interested in it. "The New Ufology" of today, the kind that younger generations are embracing, is a skeptical viewpoint that unless actual proof is obtained and not just high claims, then it is viewed as suspect material. Roswell does not cut it.

The short answer (as Larry just wrote) is that the Ramey memo is in sharp focus. The main problem is a signal-to-noise one caused by small letters down at the level of the film grain being degraded by the random film grain noise.

On the other hand, there are similarities in that much of the text in the placard and Ramey memo is semi-ambiguous and to read it you need to use linguistic techniques, which everybody does in daily life, usually unconsciously, to disambiguate such things as noisy conversation and difficult-to-read handwriting.

As I emailed Lance Moody yesterday, the skeptics were doing the exact same things reading difficult-to-read placard text that I and others do with the Ramey memo, namely applying their deep human knowledge of the situation, knowledge of the world, and knowledge of the vocabulary and rules of the English language to piece together the last three lines of text in the placard based on such things as word length, English sentence structure, and clearer letters.

Thus, e.g., you would have a hard time reading the last three words as San Francisco, California, if you didn't know the place existed. (Although I was reading "San" even without refocusing.) Knowing it was a museum exhibit of a body, probably a mummy, helps with picking out words like "MUMMIFIED" (which isn't that clear in the top line) and "body" within the next two lines. The last word on line two was "cotton" (readable even without refocusing), which lends itself to the guess that the body was clothed or wrapped in something like cotton. That bodies are usually buried, lends itself to interpreting "burial" in the text. It was clear that there was a name of someone on the bottom line (as might be expected anyway), again even without refocusing, lending itself to the interpretation that the first words on the last line might be "Loaned by" or "Donated by", as museum exhibits often are.

20 of about 38 words in the placard text are in the list of 300 most common and highly familiar English words, leading to words and phrases like "BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY" (although these are already quite clear after refocusing), "At the time of" "was clothed in a" "of these/three small" and "at".

Typically up to 65% of all English written text is made up of the first 300 most common English words, usually short, very familiar, and easily recognizable. They form the framework of all sentences, with specific adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs, etc. getting inserted into the framework. But just by knowing what the short words are plus knowing rules of English sentence structure, we also know that likely a noun, a verb, a pronoun, etc., is in a particular place, narrowing down possible words further.

Now when I point out that difficult text like the Ramey memo can mostly be read by applying the same techniques (most common words, grammar and correct sentence structure, spelling, word length, context, knowledge of the situation, and so on), I get accused of "biased" reading and seeing only what I want to see. Yet the Ramey memo is also full of common words that are usually easy to pick out like "the", "at", "and" "in" "of", "to", "for","said", "that", "would", etc. Other words are readily picked out based on the known historical context, such as "weather balloons", "Fort Worth, Tex.", "'disc'", and even "Roswell". Like the placard words, few of these words might be said to be crystal clear, yet they are unanimously agreed upon or have a strong consensus.

But heaven forbid that most readers also see "and the victims of the wreck". We can't have that, can we? That can't be due to anything other than pure bias and wishful thinking. (Even though computer OCR also rates "victims" most probable word out of various ones proposed, like "remains", which is much less probable.)

The ONLY reason to knee-jerk reject words like "victims" is because of rigid bias against the idea that what happened at Roswell could ever possibly involve bodies.

Gene Steinberg wrote:Warning bells should have sounded when Adam Dew made these fanciful claims of the vast efforts to read the words on the placard. Since you can do it in minutes in simple desktop computing software, that was a total lie.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. Speaking strictly for myself (since I know nothing about the other people or groups who supposedly attacked the problem), I spent several hours with various refocusing software such as Topaz and Focus Magic without success. These programs don't seem to do well with combinations of lens and motion blur. (That there was considerable motion blur and the nature of it wasn't evident from the highly cropped placard images I received. But it is easy to see in the full slide image, which I didn't have access to.)

Once you know (from others) that Smart ReFocus worked well (automatic estimation of lens and motion blur), that leads to quick results on the first line (in all CAPS), but still you have to play with the settings to try to optimize the image and do further image processing to bring out the letters better.

The last three lines are mostly lower-case letters, and much more difficult to refocus and resolve. A LOT of fiddling with settings has to be done here and then rapping of fingers for minutes while the program analyzes and tries to refocus the image for each setting. A great deal of time (many hours, not minutes) has been spent doing this by various people.

If you know the proper program to use and the correct settings ahead of time, yes, you can get some results in minutes (mainly the top line). But that is 20-20 hindsight.

As for reading the remainder of the placard, that was partly refocusing, and thereafter mostly a linguistic exercise, including a degree of consensus among multiple readers.

The key point here is that the claim that they couldn't do it in two or three years is absurd. Yes, I agree that it may take some testing to figure out the best software and extra guesswork to pick out the text.

First, on a human level, I think we have to accept the apology as presented by one of the participants in this charade. However, on a professional level it's a much different story. I don't believe fraudulent behavior is ever forgivable.

Assuming all of the participants had access to the high resolution scans prior to the Be Witness event, there's no logical excuse that can be made for interpreting the details of the photo as anything other than a prosaic photograph of a mummy in a museum. While high praise is deserved for the RSRG group and their fine work, the words on the placard are completely irrelevant to the issue.

It is also quite telling to read the details in this piece where unproved and unprovable claims continue to be made - this is a clear sign that critical lessons have not been learned. It's for this reason that, for myself at least, I will completely ignore any future work performed by anyone in the not-"dream team".

A price must be paid by these individuals otherwise these Alien Autopsies and Be Witness farces will continue to be perpetrated upon the UFO community. As best I can tell from reading all the blogs, we still have no statement from the two principle members of the Not-Dream-Team. No apology - nothing. I suspect that will remain the case. It is somewhat undestandable since there really is nothing they could or can say to excuse the incident. However, they could start by returning any money they made including expenses. Anyone that attended or paid for the live-streaming event should be offered the opportunity for a full refund. Again, I suspect that will not happen.

Can you believe Dolan, in his latest Blog, is referring to Adam Dew's statement that the deciphering still could be a hoax? I mean after the deciphering work the words "Old Boy", "of" and "California" stands out easiest, and if there are the words Old Boy then an age must naturally precede it, and credence instantly must be awarded to the deciphering team. Dolan clearly has still not bothered to even look for 10 seconds (either that or I am some sort of super genius with amazing eyesight - I mean heaven forbid are these people really so stupid??), and Dolan is showing more and more clearly he was in it for the money and he frankly cares less about the whole ordeal! This from a man into Zen and Truth-seeking. As I said from the start, he was in it for the money and nothing less, and I am sure they all were. Apart from Mr Bragalia who I think simply was just plain naïve and got swept away with it all - but at least he has since had the integrity to admit his error.

This is probably not the best thread to complain about how skeptics are all biased, etc. Additionally, our group wasn't composed only of hardcore skeptics like me. There were folks of all persuasions on the UFO topic.

The reason your claims for the Ramey memo aren't accepted is because the Ramey memo is MUCH more indistinguishable than the mummy placard.

Period.

Your interpretation isn't unreasonable. Nor are several others.

Additionally, the full text that you present for the memo is essentially gibberish and does not sound like English communication (even the clipped communication of the time of the teletype).

Thats' it.

I do agree with your musings that one must know how to use a piece of software in order to get the best results from it.

I might suggest that no researcher ever allow himself to fall under an NDA cone of stupidity again as you did with Carey/Schmitt.

You and I have attempted to work on some other projects together. I hope we can in the future.

Dennis Pharr wrote, "It is also quite telling to read the details in this piece where unproved and unprovable claims continue to be made - this is a clear sign that critical lessons have not been learned."

An ability to differentiate between what one was told and what one had verified to be true was never demonstrated, and continues to be absent. The same could largely be said for the collective UFO community.

The paper in his hands was most likely talking points to tell the reporter. Why would the talking points make mention of victims? If Roswell was a cover-up then the talking points would not include such information. This is the info to be communicated to the press, therefore only info suitable for the weather balloon story would be included in the talking points.

Yes, I fully understand. I wouldn't accept his apology either. That type of behavior is inexcusable.

I would like to express my appreciation to you and others in the RSRG group for your work on this issue. The group has exhibited some impressive skills and are to be commended for their efforts. In fact, I would encourage the group to pick some other targets within the well-known UFO "community" and go after them. As you know, it's a target-rich environment and is in need of a house cleaning.

Perhaps the RSSG should expand its mission as a UFO truth squad. Yes, I know it's a mixture of beliefs that include those who debunk UFOs, but if the group can reach a consensus on new results, it would help serious researchers sidestep the land mines.

Or is that UFOTS, for UFO Truth Squad! The domain is still available. Grab it! :)

Another excellent mummy in the Mesa Verde Museum is that of a small boy of perhaps two or three. X-rays of the teeth have not been taken so the exact age is uncertain. The body is well mummified, but small patches of skin are missing and the lower part of the right leg has disappeared. The skin has lost all of its former color and is an uninteresting dull gray shade. Part of a small slip-over cotton shirt still hangs around the shoulders. Several pieces of cotton in which the body was wrapped are well preserved. This mummy is not popular with visitors. It has such a negative personality that it has never been named. Even though it is well preserved, it fails to click. The spark is not there; that certain something is missing.

Ross wrote:Did Dew provide any explanation for him providing only lower resolution images?

I received high res placard scans from Tom Carey, but NEVER received any full slide scans, lo-res or otherwise. Tom was wary to even send me the placard scans, since he had apparently signed a nondisclosure agreement and wasn't sure if he was violating it.

Only very recently in the run-up to the May 5 event, did I find out about Adam Dew and his Kodachrome teaser, that he had been the one holding the slides and that he had done the drum scans. Later he added he had done the scan on only one slide. (The other apparently shows only the left half of the placard, but appears closer to the camera and maybe less blurry, so it would have been useful). I was previously provided no information who did the scans or how they were done.

At first I had no idea of the context, which you need to attempt a reading with very poor text, so I emailed Tom and asked him what it was about. Only then did he reluctantly tell me that there was a body next to the placard and they were looking into the possibility that it might be an alien. He wasn't even supposed to tell me that.

So I was given only very limited information. The only other thing I was shown very briefly was a murky printout of slide 2 on plain paper when I was at the Roswell museum in 2012. This was the slide that didn't show the woman in the background in civilian clothing and it was so dark I don't remember seeing anything in the background.

This background became evident in the recently released images that were enhanced, where you see another placard in the background and exhibits. All this makes it very evident that this was a museum-like setting, not a lab or hospital setting, which I was previously told it was.

What I spent most of my time on when I briefly looked at this printout was the head and its features and commented to Tom that it looked much more human than I would have expected for an alien. I was also told some of the still very fragmented back-story, about it being found in the attic of a woman's house (no name) when her estate was being settled and the house cleaned out. I was told there were dignitaries in some of the other slides and they then had the theory that the woman with the slides was friends with the first woman White House photographer, whom was favored by Truman (thus presumably why she might have access during a viewing by Truman of the body). Where that theory came from, I still don't know, but it was later dropped in favor of the Rays themselves taking the photos and supposedly having close ties to people like the Eisenhowers giving them access, which also didn't make much sense. (Eisenhower was a known stickler for security, even if he had been friends with the Rays.)

Even pro-alien theorists are skeptics...aren't they? They express skepticism all the time about 1) government honesty, 2) evidence presented that rebuts their alien hypothesis, 3) comments or observations presented by non-believers.

You toss the word around like it's some sort of insult when the behavior applies to you as well. Good research employs healthy skepticism....something your Not-Dream Team hasn't employed recently or in the near past.

Well said Mr. Bragalia, my respect for you is still intact. Learn from this fiasco and move on to bigger and better things.

I think Adam Dew used these slides to make a mockumentary about Ufology. I'm upset that what was seemingly obvious to many of us was not obvious to Schmitt, Carey, or others. My trust in them has been tainted.

There are plenty of other events in UFO history we could be researching and hypothesizing over! Let us all move on.

Jason, I have enjoyed your many past thoughtful speculations about visiting aliens likely being artificial intelligence or controlled by artificial intelligence, but below you are presenting more personal speculation as unassailable fact and then deriving unwarranted conclusions from such speculation.

The paper in his hands was most likely talking points to tell the reporter.

And your evidence for this is what? It is a personal bias or an assumption on your part not really born out by the the layout of the memo, well-agreed-upon text in the memo, or Ramey's known comments to reporters over the phone, in his office, and on the radio, printed in the newspapers (which I have studied in much detail), none of which matches up with the memo text.

E.g., if it was talking points for a reporter, why aren't the items bulleted or numbered? The reality is the memo is made up of two paragraphs and multiple sentences, and probably signed at the end by Ramey himself. That is an awfully strange way to compose "talking points." But it is a normal way to write a descriptive narrative intended for someone else, which is what most telexes are, though usually in a terse, not ornate language.

Why would the talking points make mention of victims?

Classic circular reasoning at work. Again, using only your ASSUMPTION of this being "talking points" as an unarguable premise, you then dismiss "victims" as being possible. And since you also assume your conclusion "victims" can't be possible, this is used to bolster your mere premise of "talking points" as being the only possible premise of what the memo represents. And around and around we go.

If Roswell was a cover-up then the talking points would not include such information.

Again, notice your bias or assumption is being presented as an unarguable fact.

This is the info to be communicated to the press,

Again just your ASSUMPTION, that the contents of the memo MUST be for press consumption, and not an internal memo NOT made for press consumption.

therefore only info suitable for the weather balloon story would be included in the talking points.

Lance wrote:So David, were you not under an NDA, yourself? I misunderstood that.

No I never signed an NDA, but I also promised confidentiality to Carey since he requested it, which was just being professional, also allowing them to quietly do due diligence on the slides.

Soon after, however, Bragalia was leaking information all over the place on the Reynold's website starting in early 2013. At the end of 2014, Carey publicly announced the slides, saying they depicted an alien, and Schmidt also starting discussing them. Come February 2015, Adam Dew put out his Kodachrome teaser, which among things has him showing the slides to multiple people all over Chicago. Then it was revealed the placard scans had also been farmed out to others to try to read, all news to me, being kept out of the loop. I learned about most of this all at the same time as everybody else. Up until that point, I had kept my mouth shut, just as I promised.

But since everybody else was talking, I felt it was time to reveal a little bit, such as being briefly shown one slide back in 2012. I also thought there would be no harm PRIVATELY sharing the placard scans with some trusted people such as Frank Warren to see what they could do, with no intent to make the actual scans public. Warren first approached Dew for permission and was turned down.

At that time, in March, I then asked Carey for permission to share with Warren. I was told absolutely not--this was a group decision. There was a legalistic undertone to it, such as don't you dare or there will be consequences. The May 5 event had already been set up and well advertised, probably more contracts between parties signed, maybe people being paid. People were probably now locked in by contract, including monetary commitments. Now violating confidentiality risked legal repercussions because money was probably involved. No thank you to that.

Given the circumstances, I kept my mouth shut and so did Frank Warren until May 5 passed. We said nothing and did not interfere in any way. After that, there was going to be another request to Adam Dew to share the placard scans, since Dew had promised release of all data after the event, but none had been forthcoming.

But before that happened, literally the same day, yet another group, as you know, was leaked a placard scan by someone unknown (or was this the result of the email hack Bragalia complained about?) and posted the deblurring results, so we got scooped. As I understand, Maussan then DID threaten to sue.

Dew then unexpectedly posted his hi-res placard scan, which was identical to one of the scans I was previously sent. (except mine was cropped down to just the placard) And the rest you know. With the scan now public domain, Frank Warren also posted his own considerable deblurring and image processing work using the same Smart ReFocus program showing the same "MUMMIFIED BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY" first line and likely "San Francisco, California" ending.

and Tony's Braglia admission shows character. I assume if there is a next time he will conduct a more thorough due diligence process.

THE RAMEY MEMO is the knife in the back for the debunk/skeptic obsession group. They simply can't comprehend the document, its outside their brain's capacity to process.(its called automatic black out)There crazy reach (regarding the RAMEY MEMO) is similar to the reach that was made by the pro- Roswell slide group.(money grab)Yes the Roswell event was a UFO event, and will always remain as that. (over 60% of the USA population believes Roswell was a cover up UFO event.)

Donated or given back to the National Park Service in 1938 by S. L. Palmer of San Francisco, whose rancher father(?, or maybe uncle) was finder of the famous Cliff Palace and Montezuma's Castle at Mesa Verde.

Wetherill became excavator and amateur archeologist of Mesa Verde, recovering a large collection of artifacts, that didn't attract much attention until he started finding buried mummies. Apparently he kept the boy mummy in a private collection, ending up with his son(?) in San Francisco, but sold off most of his other artifacts in four batches, half of it ending up in Denver at the State Museum and State Historical Society.

We now know from "Mortem Foray's" post that the boy mummy was originally on display at the Mesa Verde museum in 1940 after it was returned, but was not popular. My guess is that it was eventually repatriated to the Indian tribes and reburied. But maybe it is still in some museum basement not on display, best guess then being in Denver along with other Wetherill Mesa Verde artifacts.

Wetherill was murdered in 1910 in Chaco Canyon. Other claims to fame included inventing the term Anasazi to describe the people who lived there, and inspiring Theodore Roosevelt to declare Chaco Canyon a National Monument in 1907 to protect the antiquities there from more plundering by the likes of Wetherill.

Too late for excuses.In the field of ufology we are passing by a crepuscular age or era.The media pundits are affecting the natural approach to the phenomena.I have been a researcher since the seventies,and the involution is massive.Is not only Maussan,but all the talking heads who monopolize the media,as market,as medium.Everything have to be entertaiment and profitable,a reflection of the american subcultures,in this case a gravity effect on our next door neighbour.The Roswell Dream team turning the seed of a documentary by a naive videomaker (or puppet by circunstance) a nightmare,a tragic comedy,another documentary for HBO or Showtime ( sure there some idiotic executives who will find a way to commercialize)all of this.This past week have been an emergency call showing how the scene is out there.And the same charlatans will continue attending congresses,conventions,self publishing,and disenforming themselves and us,in redundant shows as Ancient Aliens or Hangar 1..at infinitum..Let's take action...let's research and after share,without looking for gold in the stars...

It doesn't, only in your feeble mind. It HAS NEVER been established that the telegram says VICTIMS...hence your argument that it does is false.

As I have said before the word "victims" is not standard military terminology for aliens and generally refers directly to civilian casualties. If it does say victims then it is referring non-military human test subjects not aliens. The proper term for an alien in 1947 would have been "Martians" since that was already standard nomenclature for fictional or suspected non-earthly visitors.

"Crew", "Pilots", or "Aviators" would also have been acceptable in the era.

Besides your memo does not fit standard military telegram protocol and has numerous other problems too ridiculous to even discuss. It's a media memo on a weather balloon nothing more.

PS - "victims" is also a commonly used journalistic term...even if applied to military personnel - at least from a media person's perspective. Vintage media reports use this term frequently in air crashes. Of it's in the memo then it goes to show it's a media memo not a top secret government telegram.

One question: if the boy mummy was on display during the 1940's, can we now, finally, make the assumption that the photo is genuine, and not a recent fabrication? In other words, does this finally put an end to the debate over slide/sleeves and how long film stock can be preserved in a freezer?

Yet another bull crap Ufoological con job. Why am I not surprised? Oh well, keep your nonsense coming, you hucksters, and speed up the collapse of ufoology for the betterment of mankind. Mankind deserves better than to give any of you UFO hucksters a single red cent. So keep on your spreading your filth, with every scandal more people will reach the logical conclusion that only whackos care about this stuff. And the only thing they care about is YOUR MONEY.

While we haven't (so far as I can immediately recall) had any direct contact in the past, I've been familiar with your work for quite a few years. By way of brief introduction, I'm a barrister in England afflicted with an interest in some issues relating to ufology. I have been participating in the informal "Roswell Slides Research Group". (I can send you some links to previous items I've posted online if you wish).

I'm still seeing a few (relatively speaking, _very_ few - with _almost_ everyone else accepting the deblurred placard) suggestions on Facebook discussion pages and elsewhere that "debunkers" have fabricated the deblurred placard. You are doubtless aware of the allegations (now slightly toned down, but still amounting to libel) by Dew on the Slideboxmedia.com website at:http://slideboxmedia.com/placard/

With some hesitation about bothering you, can I trouble you with a simple request?

While I think your current position is clearly implicit in your comments above, can you please state very, very briefly (ideally one brief sentence) in words of one syllable, that I can pass on to others, whether or not you have now been able to replicate the deblurred placard USING AN IMAGE SUPPLIED BY DEW (ideally WITHOUT using the kernel shared by Nab Lator and the Roswell Slides Research Group, due to one or two people suggesting that the kernel manipulates the true image).

(I don't wish to produce my own brief summary of your posts above, due to the risk of inaccurately relaying your current position).

I have pondered the Ramey memo like you. The chief reason why it cannot and does not contain anything top secret (which is what David Rudiak and a few others insist it does) is that Gen Ramey is holding the sheet with the text facing the camera and others present. Some secret!

But determined ETHers can always argue that in the excitement of discovering ETs, Ramey got very careless. But this is merely finding excuses.

As far as confirming that Roswell involved ETs, this piece of paper is as worthless as all the oral testimony obtained decades afterwards.

Strange that the ONLY Roswell related document ever found, i.e. the FBI teletype, which is based purely on what Ramey's staff told them over the phone, refers to a balloon and radar reflector. No bodies or victims either!

but this explanation rings hollow, given the fact that up until the release of the deblurred placard AJB still publically and vociferously asserted that the child was not human and looked reptoid (or even insectoid ?).

I'm actually glad that AJB would admit the level of culpability that he did, but his confession needs additional work.

Some minor updates in my article for those interested: http://skepticversustheflyingsaucers.blogspot.fr/2015/05/the-roswell-slide-saga-epilogue.html

Among them:"The body is well mummified, but small patches of skin are missing and the lower part of the right leg has disappeared." http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/region_111/vol2-1c.htmCompare now with one the slide presented by one the forensic sciences "experts" during May the 5th conference:http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-79iT5Szgnls/VVCerPUZmiI/AAAAAAAAB1w/p0OpMWbfOHg/s640/000jambe.jpg***And an ironical wink to investigator Tony Bragalia, the Mesa Verde little mummy in question was nicknamed by the scientifics... "Tony".

Ohhh please! Attendees had to fork over $350 to see that circus in Mexico City. Plus, on-line streamers had to cough up another $20. Ok Anthony, I'll take your word for it that none of this money went to you. But Maussan, Carey & Schmitt need to refund all of that money. Of course I do not expect them to do so willingly.

A class action lawsuit is in order here.

And that's not all. The perpetrators of the "Hitler Diaries" hoax received three years in prison. The criminal charges stemmed from their ill gotten gains off their hoax.

I would not expect Schmidt, Carey and Dolan to apologize or explain as it will just reinforce the lack of "scientific" rigor that made up this "research". This would be likely to cause others to examine their source material and other hearsay and speculations. As for AJB, other than the melodrama, which is/was very tiresome, he still is not clear-headed enough to now also challenge Dew's statement of how he acquired the slides. I have yet to read anything other than hearsay on that with the sources now proven to be fabricators. Call yourself an enthusiast, not a researcher or an investigator. Dew and Maussan got the money and the notoriety. There is no such thing as bad press. I wonder how many of the "I told you so" gang helped to fund this farce. I don't see anything here that discourages other "researchers" from doing the same thing again. It appears to be pretty profitable.

Isaac Koi wrote:While I think your current position is clearly implicit in your comments above, can you please state very, very briefly (ideally one brief sentence) in words of one syllable, that I can pass on to others, whether or not you have now been able to replicate the deblurred placard USING AN IMAGE SUPPLIED BY DEW (ideally WITHOUT using the kernel shared by Nab Lator and the Roswell Slides Research Group, due to one or two people suggesting that the kernel manipulates the true image).

Yes, once you know that the deblurring program of choice is Smart DeBlur (automatically figures out both lens and motion blur and hones in on optimum solution) and has given others good results, then it is a simple matter to download a trial copy, fiddle with the settings, and at least clarify the top line of bigger letters in all caps to the point that most words can be easily read.

(That's one long sentence--OK? Sorry the words aren't all monosyllabic for the benefit of your caveman audience. You also threw a lot of polysyllabic words at me in your question--it's so unfair!)

Dew's scan image is identical to one I received, except it isn't cropped down to just the placard. Using either image, setting blur area to about 60x60 and smoothness to medium and about 80, and after a minute or two of processing, out pops most of the top line quite clearly, except for the "MUMMIFIED BODY" at the beginning, which takes some interpretation.

Playing with the settings more might improve it some, as might adjusting sharpness and contrast in a paint program. This was just a quick and dirty example.

Again, however, this is all 20-20 hindsight. Other deblurring software I tried, such as Topaz, didn't do nearly as well.

So, yes, no need to use your "kern" to get. (One short sentence, all monosyllabic.)

I think the fact that the slides didn't incite any mass upheaval across the globe - whether genuine, or not, says something. Photographic evidence doesn't mean anything. We have thousands of images of craft that cannot be debunked and yet that isn't good enough. This image was not good enough. We need something tangible. We need material from a craft that cannot be explained, that goes FAR beyond our present-day technology. We need genetic material that mystifies us. We need a landing on the White House lawn - preferably right on the heads of some of the politicians there.

Alternatively, images might work if say, NASA, came out with 180,000+ images of craft seen in space which were not 'ours.' That would work.

Finding clay tablets in a cave dated thousands of years or millennia ago which reveal technology that we don't even have TODAY could be proof enough of something beyond us.

Gilles F. wrote:We read also in the scientific paper: "Part of a small slip-over cotton shirt still hangs around the shoulders." Compare again:

Perhaps Gilles can draw another arrow to that hole he previously found supposedly exactly matching holes used by Egyptian mummifiers thousands of years ago to extract the organs. That was another of his finds and theories that ended up being bogus, like those "matching" wood floor and rack supports in the Smithsonian.

Point is lots of wild speculation and nonsense has been spouted on both sides: it's an Egyptian mummy, maybe at the Smithsonian; it's an Incan mummy at a small museum in Peru; it's a Mexican mummy from Guanajuato; it's a mummy at the Million Dollar Museum in White's City, N.M.; it's a modern hoax, a fake photo using a dummy; it's from a sci-fi film, and on and on.

Well, it's a mummy, but in the end, much of everything else turned out to be unsupported speculative rubbish. They turned out to indeed be real slides of a strange real body, maybe even deformed to add to the confusion, probably on exhibit at Mesa Verde's museum in the 1940s, just not an alien.

I also don't see a good reason why the Ray's couldn't have been the photographers or even coincidentally taken the photos in the 1947 time frame. Mesa Verde is only a day's drive from where they lived. It's two days drive for me, and I've been there many years ago. Took some pictures too. Big deal.

CDA wrote:I have pondered the Ramey memo like you. The chief reason why it cannot and does not contain anything top secret (which is what David Rudiak and a few others insist it does) is that Gen Ramey is holding the sheet with the text facing the camera and others present. Some secret!

As usual from CDA, this is not accurate. In three of four pictures of Ramey holding the cursed thing, the back is very much to the camera. In the infamous photo, Ramey did NOT reverse the direction of the memo such that it faced directly at the camera. Instead, it was still facing toward him, but he laid it down horizontally as his picture was being taken, the cameraman was standing, and as such caught an angle on the front side.

As to this couldn't possibly happen, there are other known instances where it DID indeed happen, people in high positions handling highly classified documents and carelessly allowing them to be photographed.

One case in point was Pres. Johnson's National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy in 1965 allowing the New York Times to photograph a Top Secret document about the Viet Nam war held in his hand while they were doing a story on him. There was no cover sheet to conceal it, as should have been there. The photo was published on glossy paper in the Sunday Magazine probably about 10 times larger than the Ramey memo when newspaper printed the photo back in 1947 on poor quality newsprint. The top secret code name "Donar" was clearly visible.

The FBI or CIA immediately noticed and confiscated the negative and prints. The code name was then changed on all relevant documents at great expense. Another photo showed Bundy at his desk covered with other documents, probably mostly readable if the negative was blown up.

A more recent example occurred in 2009 when Bob Quick, head of England's counterterrorism unit, went to a briefing at 10 Downing Street holding a document face out, no cover sheet (which the debunkers will tell you is ALWAYS necessarily there). A press photographer with a telephoto took a crystal clear photo and a redacted version was up on the Internet within hours. The document was classified SECRET and detailed a planned raid on a terrorist cell.

There are many other examples of people well trained in maintaining secrecy leaving laptops or documents in public places with classified material, only to have them stolen, people speaking out of school and exposing top secret information.

Doesn't happen often, but it DOES happen.

People make mistakes, just like parents forgetting their small children sleeping in the back seat of their car and leaving them there to die of heat stroke, all inadvertently, and difficult to believe they could ever do such a thing, but it DOES happen. I read about these tragedies every year.

Isaac Koi wrote:That last sentence [reproducible deblurring of placard] in particular may be useful to deal with some of the comments I'm still seeing (although the number of people advancing that view continues to fall to a rather small number).

Isaac,

No doubt this weak 'scuse shall not last long since it is just plain wrong. (One sentence, all monosyllabic.)

Lance wrote:The reason your claims for the Ramey memo aren't accepted is because the Ramey memo is MUCH more indistinguishable than the mummy placard. Period.

You have provided no actual justification for that statement. It's just another argument by assertion. Interpreting the semi-ambiguous Ramey memo text can be done in the same way as the semi-ambiguous placard text even after optimum deblurring, namely using various linguistic techniques and context. You just don't want to admit it. No surprises here.

Additionally, the full text that you present for the memo is essentially gibberish and does not sound like English communication (even the clipped communication of the time of the teletype).

You mean "gibberish" like "At location was a wreck near operation at the ???????? [Ramey's thumb] and the victims of the wreck you forwarded to the ??????? [Ramey's thumb] t)eam at Fort Worth, Tex.

Or the more basic sentence without details: "At location was a wreck... and the victims of the wreck you forwarded to... Fort Worth, Tex."

Do you even know what "gibberish" means? That is a completely grammatical, intelligible sentence. In fact, one of my criteria for a good read is that it be grammatical, intelligible, good English, with one idea following from another (not isolated phrases that have no connection to one another, as in some other reads). True gibberish (of which there are examples in other reads) are a good reason to reject them, but you are just imagining that my interpretation is in any way "gibberish". I deliberately made sure it was NOT gibberish.

Your interpretation isn't unreasonable. Nor are several others.

Depends. There are other criteria for rejecting interpretations, such as trying to force-fit words of the wrong length into a position. You CAN objectively count the letters and determine the word lengths in most positions. So there is no reason we should accept MAGDALENA (9 letters) or CARLSBAD (8 letters) as equally reasonable in a place where there is a 7-letter location followed clearly by a period or comma (what the consensus is now "ROSWELL,").

Nor is *BLACK *BOX equally reasonable for where EVERYBODY else reads "DISK" XXXX' (four letter word) or "DISC" XXXX. The *BLACK *BOX read came from Glenn Fishbine and William McNeff. Fishbine admitted to me he was a Roswell skeptic and believed in the Mogul balloon explanation. Bias cuts both ways and can lead to an obviously bogus read, as in this case.

Kevin has presented us with a dilemma. The 'Roswell slides' topic is at an end, but I don't think he intended us to debate the Ramey memo in its place.

Nor do I think he wants us to debate the FBI teletype. However, even if Ramey DID make a slip and inadvertently expose this ghastly secret to the camera, we still have to account for that damned teletype. The only possible conclusion is that the 8th Air Force lied to the FBI. Told an outright lie to a government agency.

Hardly conceivable. But for the ETHers it provides a VERY weak way out of their dilemma.

I'm on hold with the Chapin Mesa Archeological museum right now. I just explained to the gentlemen on the phone this entire story (he had no clue) and he said he's going to "walk next door to the museum" and see what he can find out.

Sometimes it's easiest to just take the most direct approach and actually make a phonecall.

Update: I was told to give them my email address because they have received "hundreds of requests" about this and they plan on sending out an email/press release about this. Obviously, we're all barking up the correct tree here. I think we'll soon have further confirmation of this mummified body.

Perhaps someone should send it to Tom Carey since he has just put out a public statement stating "We believe that the recently released 'reading' of the placard by the so-called 'Roswell Slides Research Group' was faked."

Or perhaps he should be asked if he followed the step-by-step instructions I posted on ATS a few days ago to enable anyone to independently verify the results in under 2 minutes.

This is the official response from Mesa Verde National Park in response to an email I sent a few days ago:

http://www.roswellslides.com/the-roswell-slides/the-child-identified/

"Recently we've received inquiries based on internet reports concerning the ancient remains of a human child which used to be on display in the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum. We consulted with our National Park Service colleagues, who gave us this guidance: Out of respect for this child and his/her family, it was taken off public display many years ago. Although it was common practice in the past to display human remains in museums, we now try to treat them with the same respect we give to our own family members who have passed away.

There are many historical reports in the public domain of human remains that were recovered from various archeological sites in the Southwest in the early years. Interested readers can research authors like Dr. Jesse Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution and Gustav Nordenskiold. It's important to remember that, regardless of how the remains were treated at the time of recovery, each was someone's parent, child, and/or sibling. All should be treated with respect."

Unfortunately a bureaucratic, boilerplate reply saying little and telling you to go away because they don't want to be bothered any more.

Somewhere in their archives should be more information, such as the ultimate fate of the body (probably reburied following repatriation to Indian tribes), how long it was on display (might bracket when the photos were taken), maybe even visitor books saying who had visited (goes to who might have taken photos and more precisely when). There should also be some better photos of the body which might help answer some other questions, such as whether this child might have had unusual birth defects (e.g., abnormally few ribs) that later led some to misidentification.

Probably nobody there wants to spend the time looking this stuff up. Once I wanted to look up something in the Death Valley archives. The Park Service was very cooperative, to a point. I had no trouble getting in, but then I was on my own, fumbling around in the somewhat disorganized mess trying to find relative documents. The employees had other things to do.

I glad that this phony Roswell Side thing is over so that we can get on to some more interesting UFO cases. I'd suggest the wave of giant UFO sightings in up state New York backing the 1980s. Certainly a lot of the witnesses to them are still alive.

After days spent scouring the Interior Department's semi-annual "SouthwesternMonuments Monthly Reports" for references to the Palmer mummy, I've discovered it was transferred from the museum at Mesa Verde to the one at Montezuma Castle on June 7, 1947. Therefore, anyone wishing to locate archived photos of the mummy might consider contacting Montezuma Castle National Park.

Here are some of the references I've come across:

February 6, 1947:

"In January it was learned that the Palmer Collection at Mesa Verde may now be distributed through its various points of origin through permission by Mr. Palmer's son. This means that the mummy will be returned to Montezuma Castle, and Casa Grande and Chaco Canyon will receive their respective portions."

June 24, 1947:

"Museum Exhibits[:] In 1896 the mummy of a two year old boy was found buried on the ledge just outside Montezuma Castle. The discovery was made by S. L. Palmer, Jr. who in 1936 loaned his collection of artifacts to Mesa Verde National Park with the stipulation that it be kept intact. After several years of intermittent negotiations it was agreed that the mummy could be returned to the Montezuma Castle museum where it was delivered June 7 by Messrs. Steen and Grant."

https://archive.org/details/southwesternmonu1947depa

January 24, 1948:

"Fact files at the Well were brought up to date, a few more artifacts were catalogued, and a label was made for the Mesa Verde mummy at the Castle."

After days spent scouring the Interior Department's semi-annual "Southwestern Monuments Monthly Reports" for references to the Palmer mummy, I've discovered it was transferred from the museum at Mesa Verde to the one at Montezuma Castle on June 7, 1947. Therefore, anyone wishing to locate archived photos of the mummy might consider contacting Montezuma Castle National Park.

Doug, thank you for digging up this information. Better photos and hopefully other archival material would help resolve some still-lingering issues.

This also documents that the mummy was still on exhibit at the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum in early 1947, right in the time frame of the slide film stock edge code (1947), according to the Kodak expert Carey/Schmitt said they consulted. In this case, Carey/Schmitt did do due diligence in dating the slides.